What is so significant about this feast that it would take precedence over a Sunday celebration? In order to understand, we need to know something of the importance of this particular church whose dedication we are celebrating. The Lateran Basilica is a church that was built on the site of land that was given to the Church by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. It remains the most important of the churches in Rome, more important even than St Peter's Basilica. On the face of the Basilica we read the inscription: "The mother and mistress of all churches of Rome and the world." Its importance lies in the fact that it's the cathedral of Rome and therefore the pope's church, since he is the Bishop of Rome. The significance therefore, is that the Basilica symbolically represents the unity shared among all Catholics of the world together with the pope.

As our second reading teaches us, the Church is not a building - rather, it is a community of all Christians who, by our baptism, are anointed to become members of the Body of Christ. Each of us is a temple in which the Spirit of God dwells, and as members of Christ's body, we are called to continue Christ's ministry of healing, reconciliation, and preaching the Kingdom of God in our world today, together with the pope and all other baptised Christians.